


Aere Perennius

by waferkya



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Enjolras must dream of the Sun; if so, does he go blind in his sleep?</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aere Perennius

This is the reason he drinks: the bottle fills his hands and his mouth and empties his head like nothing else. Books had served the same purpose for a while, in the past; they left him with sore wrists and a smug grin on his face, more clever than he was three hundred pages ago, but his head, Minerva have mercy, books made his head heavier than lead, pried his skull open and stuffed it so that Grantaire always felt like an Atlas, bearing the weight of the world atop his shoulders.

That is wound that never heals. No matter how many times his forehead meets a hard wooden table or the unforgiving kiss of the streets of his city, bliss only comes to Grantaire if the obscene sound of a cork unscrewed calls for it.

Such is the life of Grantaire: drowning in wine not Lucretius or Robespierre, but himself; have his mouth run wild with speeches and laughter while his mind grasps nothing of it. It feels, as everything should, wonderful. It is indeed a blessing, and Grantaire would say, “the Immortals tucked away on top of their beautiful Olympus, with their cupbearers young and pretty and their ambrosia sweetened with honey, breathing in the thick fumes from their temples — the fumes, my friends, and you wrinkle your noses at the English for their poppies, when all they do is simply regard their bodies as those of the Gods — the Immortals, saints of all virtues and patrons of our beloved Philosophy, our History, they drank and smoked and danced and went to war like that, heeded their people’s prayers just so — lungs warm with wine that’ll set your mind so free, you’ll count the stars.”

“Their ambrosia and their fumes made them fuck their beasts as well,” Combeferre would point out then, not unkindly, as he would be nursing a fat glass of red himself.

Grantaire would shrug, “Ah, well; isn’t that the way our world is built? For every good thing must come with a rotten brother — love, and death; poetry, and critics; France, and monarchy; wine, and bestiality.” Enjolras, and Grantaire; but he would not say that, allowing only a wry smile to curl his lips.

Instead, he’d let his gaze wonder lazily over his friends, laughing and shaking their heads, acknowledging that this sort of delirious humor is the reason Grantaire still has a seat at their table. And then he’d look at Enjolras, golden and frowning and so very pulled to the ground, and he’d know for a fact that never has a cup kissed the lips of Apollo Phanaeus.

 

Enjolras must dream of the Sun; if so, does he go blind in his sleep?

Does he wake up with his breath in his throat like they punched him in the stomach, are his blankets sticky with sweat, does he go pale and dizzy, his head swimming when he tries to walk out of bed? Does he feel like crumbling in the pink satiny light of early morning, in the last cold bite of the night, does he ever wish he was born far, far away, where squalor and death hold no significance because life and happiness have never shown their faces? Grantaire did, before he rescued himself.

His dreams, now soaked with wine, show him a world that is not so different from the one he sees in his watches; he cannot tell the difference between the two, at times. The streets of Paris are grey and muddy in his head as they are under his feet; people dying and starving and even the smells are always the same; Enjolras, gorgeous and golden and fierce, his words of liberty and courage and brotherhood painting wings on his shoulders, only they’re not made of feathers but thunderbolts and fire. Grantaire looks at him and thinks, the Second Coming must be close; why else would have God sent to them his most terrible, most beautiful servant?

Though Enjolras serves no-one but France; he loves no-one but France; if he does dream of the Sun, as Grantaire is sure he does, then his Sun _est omnis divisa in partes tres_. His Sun burns red-white-blue and shines equally on every soul.

Enjolras talks about _Patria_ because he’s an idealist and that’s all he knows; the strength of what he feels tramples his senses, his heart will swallow him whole — he will die with a flag in his hand and the very intangible dream of Lady Liberty in his eyes, France as his mistress, blood his poison. Grantaire rambles on about everything because he’s a drunkard and he knows it all; he can’t tell the true world from his dreams but he can tell you this: he’s not going to die sober. He’s not going to die with hope. He’s not going to die at all, if he can help it.

 

The way Enjolras works his jaw as he reads is mesmerizing.

Grantaire is drunk, or he’s pretending to be, not that it makes any difference; he’s sitting at a table in the corner that smells like wine and ale and a little bit of fried onions, too. His face carefully hidden behind his arm, thick hair shadowing the telling glimmer of his eyes, he’s watching Enjolras on the other side of the room. His mind is clear, but absinthe is a thing of mischief and Grantaire doesn’t care anyway.

Enjolras came early for the meeting and he’s reading now and to Grantaire, this is like going to church. He is not going to find forgiveness because he’s not looking for it; forgiveness belongs to the penitents and Grantaire is not sorry for the blissful weightlessness inside his skull. He’s fine. Were it not for the thick curls sitting on top of his head, a puff of wind would be enough to take him away. He would not hate it, as long as it took him to the Sun.

Joly stumbles in, then Combeferre, and Enjolras slips a flyer inside his book to keep his place, then gracefully stuffs it inside his jacket. Grantaire doesn’t ever really stop looking at him.

He must be asleep and dreaming, then, because Enjolras’ eyes suddenly drop off Combeferre and dart across the room to Grantaire’s own; Enjolras sees him, sees that he’s there and awake and staring, and he blinks, very slowly. He reminds Grantaire of a distrustful cat, when he’s like that.

Grantaire lifts his head off the table and smirks at Enjolras, tilting back into the chair.

This is them. Grantaire who stares up, open and earnest and drunk to his bones, or so they think; Enjolras who leads and thinks and discusses and, out the corner of his eye, looks at Grantaire.

 

“Would it that he had a sister,” Grantaire mumbles one night that he has drunk so much, for no particular reason really, that he fears his eyes might be clouded too in the morning; Feuilly, who’s had his fair share of absinthe too, let it not be said that Grantaire is not a good sport, giggles lightly against his knuckles.

“Who?” he asks, giggling harder as his elbow keeps slipping on the wet surface of the table. “Marius? A bitter, nihilist sister, so you could win her empty, cold heart at first sight. Why not, in fact, my dear friend?”

Grantaire is always laughing when he should weep. “No, not Marius.” Obviously. _Enjolras_ , he doesn’t say, even though he’s fairly certain Orestes and Pylades and Elettra never visited Poland.

Feuilly frowns and Grantaire washes that frown away with another round of clinking glasses.

 

He wakes up with Enjolras’ name on his lips and his body burning up like a furnace. It’s a fever, he tells himself, nothing to do with what he saw in his dream, the pale, golden-haired figure that came clad in red and light and kissed him with lips that felt, tasted nothing like the lips of a woman, and cupped his face with long, lean fingers, strong and calloused from holding pens and pencils and muskets.

He is delirious after noon, or so he thinks, because he lays on his back and traces lines in the air, curves and shapes and eyes black as the shadows, and he can see them; he sees love where there is none, and curls, sharp collarbones and shoulders so narrow, thin lips and a smile Enjolras never wears for anyone, let alone for Grantaire — Grantaire sees it all, and when he sits up and leans in to kiss the Enjolras he painted with nothing on nothing, it is perfect. He feels almost happy, almost like he means something.

Enjolras thinks and says they’re too small to hold any meaning for the world individually, whereas as a group, Les Amis, the people, they can leave scars. Grantaire agrees, he knows Enjolras is right; but the fight that fills his Apollo and makes him shine the brightest is never enough for Grantaire, he wants so much more, he needs so much more, for he is, and always will be, so much less than Enjolras.

 

Death comes knocking with her knuckles of lead, but if she had thought she’d find Enjolras scared and surprised, unprepared, mortal, she was wrong.

Enjolras is ready, unafraid, sad for the friends he’s lost today but not desperate, for too fierce is his love for France and it takes up all the space in his heart, and he can’t ever be desperate. He stands proud, defeated and unbent. Filled with luminous faith, his ideals, like his shoulders, like his back, like his eyes, firm and unyielding.

He doesn’t need Grantaire, he never did; but he permits it.

**Author's Note:**

> Random things: Pylades ended up marrying Elettra, Orestes' sister, and basically it was Apollo who set them up. _[Gallia] [aka France] est omnis divisa in partes tres_ is the incipit of Caesar's _De bello Gallico_. /pedantry
> 
> I solemnly swear I'll write these two a bit better next time.


End file.
